News of the Weird: June 7

By Chuck Shepherd, Universal Press Syndicate

June 6, 2012Updated: June 7, 2012 10:56am

A social, um, "butterfly"

No insect is in greater need of a public relations boost than the cockroach, and Dr. Mathieu Lihoreau of Rennes, France, provided it in a recent issue of the journal Insectes Sociaux. Roaches are highly social, suffer when isolated, recognize members of their own families and appear to make "collective decisions for the greater good" of their community, according to a review of the research in May by BBC Nature. They act in "emergent forms of cooperation" - "swarm intelligence." Functioning mostly through chemical cues, they advise their homeboys where to find food and water, where the good crawl-into cracks are for sleeping and how to stay attached to their social networks.

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Dr. Jason Burke rolled out his "Hangover Heaven" medical bus fleet in Las Vegas in April, offering revelers a faster, clinically proper recovery from their night of excess drinking for a $90 to $150 fee. After giving their medical history, "patients" receive intravenous saline, with B and C vitamins and whatever prescription or over-the-counter drugs are appropriate, says Burke (a licensed anesthesiologist). No drunks are served; the patient must be in the "hangover" stage. One M.D. told CBS News, "I think many doctors are kicking themselves because they didn't think of this first."

Science on the cutting edge

People with Alternating Gender Incongruity say they periodically but repeatedly sense themselves as of the opposite gender, sometimes imagining to have "phantom genitalia" of that gender. Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran, of the University of California, San Diego's Center for Brain and Cognition, tested 32 previously undiagnosed AGI sufferers and found mild correlations with multiple-personality disorder, bipolar disorder and, oddly, ambidexterity. His research appeared in April in the journal Medical Hypotheses and was reviewed by Scientific American.